In one word: you don’t know?

1. The option of tradition is difficult, because something so essential should have appeared in sources prior to him.
2. Observing nature does not provide a full answer; for example, there are no wicked and righteous in nature.
3. And regarding the possibility that he was a prophet — an interesting conjecture, but David did not tell us that in any case. I would have expected a statement in the name of the one who said it.

I don’t know what King David saw, but I see animals preying on one another.

Torahandi, did you think I had a direct line to King David? Unfortunately I have to disappoint you. I wrote what seemed to me reasonable. If you don’t accept it — that’s your right.

I’m afraid I may not have spoken with the proper respect. If so, please forgive my wrong.

Everything is fine. No problem at all. As usual, I have no issue with one style or another, only with the absence of arguments.

Tora, all animals lack free will; that is, they are deterministic automatons with no real will. If so, why were they created so cruel? Cats play with mice, lions go out hunting for sport and leave the wounded to die in the field… Their actions are the direct will of God — to torment, not to love.

So I don’t understand.
You start to touch on plausible conjectures, and then stop and say that you have no direct connection to David.

If you think a direct connection to David is needed in order to answer, then the answer should have been from the outset, “I don’t know” or “Not relevant.”
And if this can be investigated with the tools we have, then you didn’t really answer the point.

You lost me.
Someone remarked that I should simply have said briefly that I don’t know. Wasn’t that you? Your username is signed on it.
To that I wrote you that if, in your opinion, I need a connection to King David in order to answer, then unfortunately I don’t have one. But in my opinion, of course, no such connection is needed; rather, one can raise plausible conjectures. That’s what I did. What is not to the point about that? That’s all.

Apparently the connection got cut off 🙂

That was indeed me, but I corrected myself and spelled out my questions in the comment after that.

I didn’t really see questions there. I saw a continuation of the previous remark that simply spelled out why, in your view, a direct connection to King David is needed and conjectures are not enough. In my view they are entirely reasonable, and I don’t see what is difficult about them.
1. For some reason you decided that the option of tradition is difficult because something so essential should have appeared in earlier sources. But that is the meaning of tradition: that it is transmitted through the generations even if it is not written. Otherwise you are simply identifying tradition with reliance on earlier written sources.
2. I really didn’t understand the second comment. What does it mean that “there are no wicked and righteous in nature”? I see good conduct on the part of the Holy One, blessed be He, who cares for His creatures. What does that have to do with wicked and righteous? And besides, can’t I distinguish between the righteous and the wicked? Why does this need to be “in nature” (what does “to be in nature” even mean?).
3. Apparently your expectations were disappointed.
In short, I see here mere stubbornness, not difficulties. I answered as best I understood, and if you don’t accept it — that is perfectly fine.

It seems this has run its course from your perspective, so I’ll stop here.

A response to A.

The questions about mercy in nature seem to me very powerful.
To them one can add the endless pain experienced by the human creature, the wars that cut down millions before their time, diseases, and death that in the end visits everyone.
It cries out: where is His mercy and where is His goodness?

I don’t know.

But I’ll still add a few fragments of thought:
Given that death and pain are facts — that is, there is a framework to life and a framework to the level of comfort one will experience in it, without understanding why — *within that framework* perhaps one can look for mercy.

Here is something I wrote about it:
It seems that mercy is like the capacity to listen to a particular weakness, even when it does not align with the ideal, even when it requires ignoring the law — strict justice.
For example, when a person asks a police officer for mercy so as not to lose his driver’s license, he too does not want criminals on the road, and he too agrees that in order to enforce that, punishment is necessary; but the request for mercy asks that his particular weaknesses be heard, and his inability to bear the punishment, while at the very same time, even in his own view, justice should still go on punishing in every other case.

And notice that nature is full of laws that in their essence are attentiveness to particular weaknesses.
See how all animals, of every kind and species, get up morning after morning and find food to eat, regardless of their size or place in the food chain.
See how for almost every kind of disease, nature stands ready and invents remedies; nature does not get angry and ask why we were not careful about all the infections — it simply strokes us and says: sick? what’s the problem, there’s a hospital…
(The “corona” only reminds us how many thousands of other viruses have already been eradicated.)
See how even the world’s criminals still go on getting up in the morning, receiving another chance to repair.

And by contrast, look at the female need that awakens day after day, desperate for love, and opposite it a male army that only longs to give it.
Look at the brightly colored flowers, carefully engineered.
Look at the blushing red of the tomato, the green of the apple, the yellow of the banana.
Smell a strawberry, real pineapple, or freshly ground coffee; smell your favorite food.
Nature tries from every direction to inject its mercy into us, its attentiveness.

It is a system of laws of nature, but laws that are all mercy, all attentiveness to particulars.

And yes, there are heaps of suffering. When you suffer, you suffer.
And then you ask: is there someone there? Does He know how to feel what suffering is?! And where is mercy then, and why is there hunger, and why are there diseases, and why are there suicides, and why is there loneliness?
These really are difficult questions. But they are difficult whether justice rules or mercy rules.
Apparently one has to learn to bow one’s head in humility, to scream when it hurts, and to agree to be reconciled when nature smiles again.

The intelligence with which nature is endowed is apparently greater than our questions.
But it seems that attentiveness to our weaknesses is etched into its very behavior.

There is still much more to think about here, but I’m writing it anyway…

I had a discussion about this not long ago; see: https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%d7%a7-%d7%a6%d7%98%d7%a0%d7%99%d7%a7-%d7%9e%d7%94%d7%a9%d7%95%d7%90%d7%94-%d7%95%d7%a1%d7%99%d7%9b%d7%95%d7%9D-%d7%98%d7%99%d7%91%d7%95-%d7%a9%d7%9C-%d7%94%d7%90%d7%9c

And one more thing: David most likely never existed.

I understand that you conducted thorough research on the matter 😉